


the day even longer

by kimaracretak



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, Introspection, Post-Shooting Star (Overwatch)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-04-06 08:51:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: [ Hana, post-Shooting Star, on appearances and living. ]





	the day even longer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [echoslam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoslam/gifts).



> Can I come over, I need to rest  
> Lay down for a while  
> Disconnect  
> The night was so long  
>  _The day even longer_  
>  — 'Triangle Walks', Fever Ray

Hana's left leg was broken.

Somewhere, prickling at the back of her awareness, was the knowledge that there were other things wrong, other things painful and aching and deserving of her attention, but it was the throbbing sense of absolute disconnection in her leg that dragged her up and out of the chemically-induced sleep.

There was her body, and then there was empty space, and then her body picked up again, the rest of her leg.

Most of her body ... she had just enough sense to conclude that must mean she was alive. And if she was alive, then Dae-hyun ... Yuna ... the base, the whole city ...

She turned her head with difficulty, forced her eyelids open, and was immediately drowned in a wash of grey and white, the bright, sterile shade unique to the base hospital. The light was more overwhelming than any night she'd ever flown into, and tears blurred over Hana's vision, rendering everything vast, swimming, indistinguishable shapes.

She was alive.

The base was still standing.

She was … alone?

Hana blinked once, twice, and slowly let her senses return. The pressure of a cast on her arm, the sharp sunlight streaming through the window at her left, the steady beeps and hums of medical equipment, the too-soft pillow like a cloud under her neck.

The emptiness in her leg where bone had snapped - she held herself very still and let herself be convinced that none of her other body parts ached _that_ much.

Yuna in the chair next to the bed, curled up and snoring in the patch of sunlight like a cat, her brand-new scar snaking from her cheek down under the neck of her standard-issue pajama top.

Hana smiled to herself, and didn't fight as sleep crept over her once again. Everything would be fine.

 

**

 

Waking up from regular sleep was always so much better than waking up after being knocked out from meds. Hana opened her eyes slowly, and the room came into focus much more quickly this time. Yuna was awake too, idly scrolling through something on her tablet.

"You look like shit." Hana hadn't made a sound, but there was no hiding anything from her best friend, not after years and years of growing so attuned to each others' microexpressions on the arena stages.

Turning over and burying her face in her blankets was out of the question, so Hana settled for flinging her less-injured arm over her eyes. "You're really gonna start with that before I've had any caffeine?"

She heard the clatter of metal on wood as Yuna's tablet hit the desk, and moved her arm just enough to see Yuna biting her fingernail. "Yeah. I mean, squad privilege. And it's about time I get to say it for once."

Hana smiled. Truthfully, she would have gladly put herself on the receiving end of the worst of Yuna's trash-talk from their Mecha Guardian days, at least until the novelty of their mutual survival wore off. "I still want caffeine though. Maybe an IV of it. Right next to … whatever this is." She flicked at the needle in her arm, and winced as it somehow made the ache in her leg sharpen again. "God, I missed you. How _are_ you?" It was the only easy thing to say, and all she can think is that she hadn't said that to her nearly enough, before.

Yuna touched her scar absently. "Better now that you're awake," she said, and Hana bit her lip as if that would stop the tears welling in her eyes. "The rest of the squad are gonna come by soon," she continued, before Hana could dwell too much. "By which I mostly mean you have about thirty minutes before Casino gives you a two day long lecture about Icelandic werewolf fighting sims."

Hana blinked, tears forgotten. "That's, uh. A series of words?"

Yuna snorted affectionately. "Yeah, but, it's a series of words that lead to four thousand viewers this morning. Honestly pretty incredible, considering -"

Considering how little time any of them had for variety streams these days. Considering that Casino was still recovering from his own injuries, considering that this morning was also the morning after Hana's battle with the Gwishin - or was it?

"How long have I been out?" she asked.

"Day and a half." Yuna's voice wavered for the first time, and Hana swallowed hard, trying to comprehend that. She'd never lost that many days to injuries, none of them had, and she couldn't imagine what they must have gone through waiting for her to wake up. They all faced death with a regularity that could put her and Yuna's old schedules in the team house to shame, but they rarely got close enough to do more than wink and wave, _gg let's go, the Gwishin tried_.

The Gwishin had been trying a little too hard, lately.

"Dae-hyun?"

Yuna sighed. "Stopped calling you names when you passed six hours unconscious. I think he wanted to have an entire new mech built for you by the time you were up again."

He probably blamed himself, Hana thought. It would be too like him, to forget about the part where he'd saved her life and get too stuck on the bad parts - the parts Hana had already spent way too much time dwelling on for one morning before tea. "Silly," she said, and surprised herself with how steady her voice was. "You know boys. He'll get the colours all wrong. I'm sure you're building me something much better, huh?"

Yuna grinned, grateful for the change in tone. "Better like … a new Black Ghost Rising alt with all the fantasy skins?"

Hana nearly sat up in shock, before the medical equipment reminded her how firmly tethered to the bed she was. "For real?"

"Yeah, for real."

"You're the best," Hana sighed, and as she sank back into her pillows, listened to Yuna detail her new Ikiryō's stats, she allowed herself to forget, just for a moment, what was coming next.

 

**

 

NO MEKA NO CHOCOLATE JUST MEEE [!DVA !POLL]  
2 hours ago ◦ 340,034 views

_D.Va re-engaging, bunny rabbits! I know you probably had to see me the other night on the regular news, but don't worry, next time I'll get something set up for you even if it's super short notice again. Anyway, hi easybird, hi Rena, hi halle-witch - you better be first in my comments section here, no slacking just cause it's pre-recorded and not stream chat. I wanted to thank all you guys who have sent me things over the past few days - I've read all your cards but I'm gonna try to save everything to do a loooooong unboxing stream in a couple days if my schedule lets me, or maybe a stream of some of the games you've sent me keys to? Except if you sent me anything with chocolate, that's, uh, all gone already. D.Mon has to live up to her name somehow ... do you think we could rename her Can-D-Mon, or something? You know, candy demon? Ugh, that sounds terrible out loud. Big kisses to all my English speakers, but you have the worst puns. I always think they're gonna be great and then ... ugh. Fortunately I have plenty of other things to say._

_So! Candy gone, Gwishin omnics gone, medbay staff - not gone, in fact definitely giving me their 'you're being way too loud' stares, even though I'm supposed to be in a private room. Honestly? I've been here for, like, five hours, are they really tired of me already? That's why I like you guys better, you don't get tired of me even when I do 24 hour streams. I'll have a couple more videos to fill the time before regular streams start back up again, my schedule is preeeeeetty packed right now. Maybe I'll sneak on for some Black Ghost Rising with D.Mon - it'll be a bribe to make her give me my chocolate back. So remember to follow me for notifications when I upload a new vid or go live! And subs, keep an eye on our chat, because Seelie or one of my other mods is gonna post a poll of my most recently gifted games so you can decide which one I'll try first! As always, special surprise on stream if there's a tie._

_Kisses! Love, D.Va._

 

**

 

Next was photo ops, so regular that Hana could count the days by them, at first: no more than five a day, doctor's orders, and no less, either, Hana, migraines don't mean you can't smile, and would you _please_ sit somewhere that looks less like the medbay? She tried refusing to speak English after the third day, hoping that would get at least a handful of journalists to leave her alone, but all that won her was more translation devices in her face, more lectures from Command, more time spent standing stiff-backed and silent as the excuses others made for her swirled through the air - our hero, so particular, so patriotic.

Hana kept her mouth shut and didn't say that she would have done the same for any city. She was Korea's, and that was that, no matter the Hollywood movies or the Oasis VIP tours. She was Korea's, and she would fight for Korea on the frontlines or on her streams, it didn't matter, and that -

\- _did_ that mean she couldn't protect anyone else?

The Omnic Crisis had brought the world together, after a fashion and after an unreasonably long time, and other countries were far less close-mouthed and closed-eyed about sharing images of their devastation. Protecting her home shouldn't mean leaving the rest of the world untouched.

Hana watched herself in the camera lenses, watched herself fall out of her own thoughts, the present whirls of lights and sound and mechanical congratulations slipping away as the night wrapped around her again, sea and sky and steel and her friends dotted around her like shooting stars.

Shooting stars that were falling, far too fragile and she couldn't do enough to glue them together or let them fly.

 _I can't see, I can't see anything, I can't_ \- King would plead as she craned her neck around the huddle of visitors hoping for a glimpse out the window, and Yuna's mouth moved over her last call in the storm, _I'm hit, I'm hit_ , too angry to be scared, except Yuna was fine, shoving her way through Hana's door with two headsets in hand.

Rain on her face - except there were no warnings on her HUD, no sign that Tokki's shell had been pierced, and when Hana dared to lift her hand from the defence matrix controls to touch her cheek, she found only tears.

"Camera lights," she said, and the cluster of journalists nodded sagely, sweeping her over to stand on the other side of the window, where they wouldn't need a flash. Anything for D.Va, if it meant that her adoring public wouldn't see even the possibility of physical, human weaknesses. Anything for D.Va, the saviour of Busan, and nothing for Hana Song who might have other reasons to cry.

Everyone was alive, injuries were mending. Hana's migraines receded far enough and Yuna's shoulder had healed enough that they were able to stream Black Ghost Rising and Warmech Aqua II for a few hours. The squad kept visitors out of the gym for her, and she was working her way back up to full weight routines. And Hana had never cared so much before, never found it so hard to recover after a close battle or even a seemingly endless publicity gauntlet. Why was this time so different?

 

**

 

NO MEKA NO CHOCOLATE JUST BABY DVA STARCRAFT VODS [!VELVET]  
4 hours ago ◦ 523,948 views

_Hi everyone! I would say it's time for you to guess what day it is, but I just got the mail from Seelie and - oh. Holy heck, rabbits, you really want me to play Velvet Roulette that badly? Guys, what IS this, o-m-g have I been this out of the loop this badly the past few days? See why I need you, chat!_

_Uh, okay, hang on, excuse the angle, I have GOT to look this up and D.Mon isn't here to hold the camera for me while I get on my - see, this is why I need to be streaming! I have no cute Sunny graphics to make this better, but you can have your very own graphics if you commission her, do that while I read about Velvet Roulette, Sunny Sunbean, you've definitely seen her in chat, or her own art streams, remind me to put her info under this when I upload it if she ... hasn't ... already ..._

_... oh. This. Hm. It's a five player thing, looks like, which - I would say that would mean sub games if I could set them up? Not sure I could do that pre-recorded, though. MEKA squad stream? But King's banned from my teams until he takes back all the shit he talked about raspberry nano cola, so._

_Sorry these are so short, bunny rabbits, I miss you so much. The rest of this video is just Starcraft highlights - but like, old-school Starcraft, baby D.Va just learning how to play when she was like four Starcraft, so that should be fun! Watch until the end for a secret, and remember, while my schedule is still, uh, this, go support Sunbeann, Seelie, halle-witch - you know, the usuals, I am at least staying on top of my hosting duties from here._

_Also, if more chocolate happened to, you know, appear near me, I wouldn't be sad. I think D.Mon just let me beat her in Black Ghost Rising the other day so I wouldn't notice she'd TAKEN MORE OF MY CHOCOLATE._

_Kisses! Love, D.Va._

 

**

 

After the seventh day, Hana was convinced the universe was just fucking trolling her. There was absolutely no way this was the second time in a month that she was lying in bed eating crisps and sketching out plans for repairs to her mech while listening to the news describe in breathless, overeager lurid detail the international parties that she was at. Invitations piled up unread in her inbox, the few dresses her stylists had allowed her to keep hung lonely in her closet, and edits of her gazing adoringly up at businessmen and politicians like a puppy being praised made their supercharged way across gossip sites and real news programmes that should know better alike.

The edits weren't even _good_ , more than half the time, and that was unreasonably annoying. Photos from events that happened years ago, her wearing medals from esports tournaments that hadn't even been altered to look like they were from the military instead. Hana was making better graphics for her first stream on a potato laptop, before she started commissioning them.

Not to mention the colours some of them put her in. All that stream footage they had, when she was dressed up nice and had actually bothered with makeup or facepaint, and someone still had her in a weird parody of a police officer uniform, complete with a sky-blue blouse that did nothing but wash out her skin to near-invisibility.

Hana wasn't usually one to turn down attention, especially if it meant that her squad was left in peace, but she didn't think it was too much to ask that the attention she got was in recognition of things she had actually done. This was barely attention, it was …

Hana didn't know. It was one more thing in a long list of things she wasn't quite sure to deal with in this forced downtime.

 

 

**

 

NO MEKA NO FACE GOT CHOCOLATE [!TOKKI2 !VELVET]  
Preparing for upload ◦ 1:04:23

_Bunny rabbits! Guess what! I have two hands and no face! No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, the omnics don't want me to have a face and I'm way too good to let them have their way._

_For real, though, no face cam today, but I promise it's for a cool reason. We're trying out a new HUD for streaming and recording today, by which I mean, I have a brand new HUD for streaming that I think a certain best friend of mine thought I would use for my new MEKA - she's gonna be Tokki's big sister, have I told you that? - but I had to test it out first, and what's good for streaming tends to be what's good for piloting!_

Hana hit the pause button with far more force than necessary, her mouse clicking irritably at her as she tapped it over and over. Play pause play pause play pause, and screen-Hana's view staggered forward frame by frame. The HUD was a gorgeous piece of work, a sleek band that shifted colour as the noise level in the room rose and fell and a wide enough field of view that there was only the occasional flash of brightness, less obtrusive than a poster hanging somewhere not quite out of sight, to remind her that the lines of information laid out over the world in front of her really was an overlay, not the physical world.

And she couldn't do a thing with the video, not unless she could make it fun and relate it to games, not unless she could come up with a damn good reason why she was wandering MEKA base halls instead of lounging in a Shanghai hotel bar. She'd lose half her viewers without the first, piss Command off with the second, and despite the tenuous reality of her streams, despite the near-claustrophobia of her life on base lately, she had no desire to do either of those things.

She'd never felt such a disconnection between her two worlds before, never felt so unhappy with both of them at once, and she hated herself for it.

"Song!" Myung's voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

Hana pushed herself to her feet, grimacing at the way her hip cracked. She'd probably overdone it on the treadmill yesterday, too excited with her newly expanded freedoms. "Captain, ma'am."

"You have a visitor." An important one, if Myung's formal uniform was anything to go by, which meant one that Hana was desperately underdressed for. But then, why would Myung bring someone in without notifying Hana ahead of time? She braced herself for another journalist, maybe even a politician.

She wasn't expecting a ghost to follow her captain into the room.

The woman's hair was white and tightly braided, her uniform was a shade of blue Hana had never expected to see in person. "Captain Amari," Myung said. "This is our star pilot, D.Va. She's the one who brought down the Gwishin single-handedly last week."

"Not single," Hana corrected automatically, before her manners had a chance to catch up to her mouth. She knew, by now, that no one would care how much Dae-hyun had helped her when the main C&C towers had been silent, but it didn't stop her from making the correction every time, for better or worse.

"Captain Amari will be a guest of the base for the next few days," Captain Myung continued, as if she could erase Hana's rudeness simply by not acknowledging it, though Hana thought she saw the faintest of grins twitching at the side of Captain Amari's mouth. "Since you're still out of the main training rotations, you'll be her guide."

"It will be an honour," Hana said with a bow, and with that, Captain Myung left them alone.

"Hana Song," Hana said as soon as the door had hissed shut behind her. "D.Va is - she's for the camera and the cockpit, not here."

Captain Amari nodded. "I understand."

She did, too, Hana could tell, and part of her desperately wanted to know what other names the captain had had, but she knew better than to ask. Lost for anything else to say, she said, "You were with Overwatch."

Something unreadable flickered across Captain Amari's face, almost like she disagreed, but the moment passed. "I was."

"You left Korea alone," Hana said, and wondered if her smile was as blandly fake as it felt. No one knew the difference anymore, and with Myung safely out of shouting range, the weeks were starting to take their toll. "Which was fine! We're fine here."

"Yes," Captain Amari said dryly. She didn't move a muscle, yet Hana could feel her one good eye scanning the garage, taking stock of the tangles of wires and piles of scrap metal, lingering over Tokki II's growing frame. Looking at the expanse of the garage, rather than her screen, Hana could tell it had been cleaned up for her visit - whether to impress the foreign captain or out of fear that wherever Hana went the paparazzi might follow, she couldn't say - and didn't particularly care, in the moment. "Your newscasts are quite clear about that."

"The news is - " Hana darted a glance at the doorway. "Well, they say a lot of things. I like to concern myself with what's actually in front of me."

Sometimes it was a camera. Sometimes it was Gwishin tentacles. When Captain Amari smiled and grasped Hana's hand between both of hers, Hana thought that, perhaps, she understood that the second was often the more preferable option.

 

**

 

Whatever business Captain Amari had, Hana was never quite told, but it certainly didn't seem to stop the captain from being by her side near-constantly the first few days. Captain Amari's presence was the first thing besides playing games that made Hana feel awake, and for that alone she would have loved the captain. But Hana quickly found out that Amari wasn't just a visiting officer, she was an enthusiastic follower as Hana showed her around the public - and less-public - parts of the MEKA base, a passable grade 3 mechanic when it came to mech life support systems, and a surprisingly deft hand with a dagger in Black Ghost Rising. She seemed out of place in the base, in a way Hana couldn't quite put her finger on, but when they worked together she almost couldn't imagine life on the base _without_ her.

On the fourth day, after Hana had spent the entire morning stuck in a physical therapy session, Captain Amari found her alone in her room, eating a late lunch in her daytime pajamas, and asked if she wanted to go down to the beach. Hana stilled in surprise: she hadn't been off-base since they'd pulled her out of the ocean.

Captain Amari's expression was gentle, more open than Hana had grown to expect from her. "Unless you'd rather go somewhere else?" she asked, and something inside Hana twisted at the words, stretched further out be as vast and bright as the sky above whenever she hit Tokki's boosters and could, for a few impossible seconds, only go up.

"No," she said, and it felt - it felt like the first true thing she'd said in months. "The sea is where I won. I won't let the Gwishin take that from me, no matter how many times they come back."

"They won't miss you here?"

They would, of that Hana was absolutely certain. She had recovery holos to film, time she should spend working on her mech, and Yuna's last, unanswered comm. And she didn't care, not when the alternative was spending the afternoon with Captain Amari.

"Doesn't matter." She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, grimaced at the wrinkled grey of her sweatpants. "I need to change first. If the cameras see me like this someone'll kill me and then they really won't miss me."

Captain Amari said absolutely nothing, and Hana sighed, feeling her cheeks colour slightly at the implied rebuke. "Yeah. Not funny."

"There's always more people who will miss you than you expect," Captain Amari said. Her voice was strange, an impossible sort of tired, and when Hana looked over she saw the other woman's eyes were fixed somewhere past her, past anything in this world.

History hadn't known how or even if to mourn Ana Amari, Hana remembered. She'd talked about the captain on one of her first streams after joining the Army, when chat had wanted to know about her heroes and inspirations. Captain Amari had been high on the list, unbearably accomplished and unbearably gorgeous, an Overwatch legend and the best sniper in the world and someone who had walked into death and - in dreams, imaginations, and now in the real world - out the other side.

And somehow, impossibly, into Hana's life.

(Hana had kept silent, then and now, on her real top reason for admiring the captain so much. Ana had never seen a contradiction between her time in the Egyptian army and her time in Overwatch.)

She imagined that was Ana was really saying was: _I would miss you_.

She knew for herself that if Ana were to disappear right now, she would miss her - she wasn't at all sure that she'd earned that right, after two days with the woman herself and five years reading about her history, but - she would.

"I don't want anyone to have to miss me," Hana said seriously. She also wasn't sure why her need to clarify that for Captain Amari was so strong, but she felt like she'd crossed some invisible line that was about more than the joke itself. "Everything I do, it's about keeping the Gwishin back. It's not about wanting to die, or -"

"I didn't think it was," Amari said. "But I'm glad you know the difference."

And the approval in her voice - _oh_. Hana paused stupidly halfway out of her shirt, feeling Amari's warm gaze on her back as the realisation hit her. Dating was heavily discouraged by both army life and idol contracts, but Hana'd had enough crushes to know what was going on.

She could probably have lived without knowing that, though. Now things were going to be _complicated_.

 

**

 

The promised storm clouds had swept up over the horizon line by the time the two of them made it down to the shore, casting the midafternoon light with desaturated shades of blue, an autumn twilight come far too early. Songdo Beach was quiet, almost eerily so - Hana couldn't necessarily blame anyone for not being so close to the water, but the reminder that this last attack had been different enough to keep the usually appearance-conscious city indoors was an unpleasant one, especially since it had been nearly two weeks.

 _This isn't what I fought for_.

She shivered in the nearly nonexistent breeze as the cable car passed overhead, resisting the urge to press closer into the warmth of Captain Amari at her side. She wasn't a child, she didn't need any reassurance - but she wanted it, wanted something physical to hold onto, absent a game controller or Tokki's joysticks.

Hana hadn't realised until just now how cold she'd been, how it was nearly a surprise to move and not feel the entirety of the ocean in her bones. The Pacific waters had sheltered her from the worst of the shrapnel when the remains of Tokki and the Gwishin had finally lost the battle against gravity, and she had repaid it by swallowing what felt like thirty litres of it as her reflexes continued to command her to breathe.

Now it winked at her with reflected light, and the waves crept forward over the seawall to see if they would receive another warm welcome or perhaps to see if they could spirit her away down below again.

"I don't think I could ever get used to how bright it is here," Captain Amari said, and Hana looked over in surprise. The Taejongdae bridge was lighting up in response to the early clouds, the brilliant blue-green neon runners flickering on along the sides and support pylons to warn both surface and air vehicles of the approaching obstacle.

Hana frowned. "You have rivers in Egypt." It sounded stupid the moment the moment the words left her mouth, and she ducked her head, cheeks flaming.

"Mhm. It's always different in the sands, though."

When Hana darted a glance up, Captain Amari was smiling. "Well. Let me show you all the lights we can find."

 

**

 

MODS GIMME TITLE PLS [!TOKKI2 !VELVET]  
Recording... ◦ 00:05:33

_Hi bunny rabbits, sorry for the lack of games yesterday but I was busy at the beach. Not because of the Gwishin, for once! I had some very important karaoke battles to win instead, and also a little bit of investigation to do into the cable car system to see if there's anything I could use for Tokki II. I know, I know, I'm getting tired of all the pre-recorded stuff too, but look on the bright side: the only thing worse than my streaming schedule right now is base lighting! I look sooo much more presentable after Sunny has a chance to do all sorts of magical things to the colours. Seriously, go check her out, she's everywhere online as Sunbean, and her emojis are the absolute cutest things._

_Ugh, I think my fingers physically hurt that I can't tell chat-Tokki to give her a shoutout. Muscle memory is crazy. Anyway, Sunny! Emojis. Commission her, the links are in my description. In the meantime ..._

In the meantime, what? Hana dropped the recorder with a sigh and flung herself back onto her pillows in despair. She'd run out of Command-approved things to film within the first few days, taking refuge in gaming streams for the overwhelming numbers of her viewers who couldn't be bothered to wonder if she was streaming in fancy dress from a Hollywood hotel room or her oldest pair of pajamas in her MEKA base bed. But the thought of games today, even of Starcraft, provoked nothing but a deep, unsettling boredom.

She wanted to stream the progress she was making constructing new parts for Tokki II. She wanted to do a chat stream about reactor physics, even though she could already hear her mods groaning about the number of stupid boys who probably failed primary school maths that they would have to ban. She wanted -

She wanted to see Captain Amari again. She wanted to see _Ana_ again, the woman who'd asked to ride the cable car and bought Hana sparkling wine on the rooftop of a karaoke club.

Memories of their time on the beach lingered, transparencies plastered over the greys and blues of the base like the afterimages of her screens after long streams.

Hana had strict policies about guests on stream - they were limited to Yuna for gaming streams and whichever of her squadmates happened to wander too close by in the background and catch chat's attention during RL streams - but the more she thought about it, she wondered if she could do something with Ana. Something about the history of Overwatch, or why MEKA was definitely going to beat the Gwishin again, or …

The particulars of it didn't matter. The mere _thought_ of being on camera with Ana was exciting in a way she wasn't used to. And after they were done chatting or gaming or building or whatever, when Ana had told her more stories, maybe she would smile and say she was proud of Hana, tell her again how much she enjoyed their time together. She'd brush Hana's hair back, kiss the top of her head, and when she pulled back Hana would chase her before she could turn away, would capture her lips in another kiss, one that Ana would return, her hands buried in Hana's hair and her mouth tasting of jasmine ...

God, she was screwed, and Hana was absolutely certain if that went on any longer she was going to lose it. Full-on, 10hp with ten minutes left in the boss fight, just watched the unskippable cutscene for the sixth time, chat won't stop backseating with advice that will get her killed faster lose it.

She'd forgotten, somewhere along the way, what it felt like to _want_ someone to look at her.

And she wasn't used to keeping quiet about things, either. She'd long since lost count of the number of times she'd embarrassed herself onscreen, but outside of streams - she'd thought that living in the team house and then the base had done a thorough job of getting rid of her capacity for embarrassment, but she was certain that unless she blurted something out to Ana entirely unconsciously, she would -

No, who was she kidding, she'd absolutely embarrass herself anyway. Giving the abandoned recorder one last look, she pulled her blanket over her head and rolled over onto her good leg.

Sleep took her quickly, and when it did, she dreamed she was drifting in the ocean again, naked, safe in Ana's arms, hidden under the soft white curtain of her hair.

 

**

 

Morning found Hana at the far east end of the base, tucked away on a hidden observation platform watching pale blue energy spark against the creeping sunrise as she idly kicked her boots against the field protecting the interior from the salt spray and - worse. Pastel lights smeared themselves against the horizon, colours cold beyond their barrier.

It was warm inside the base, though, at least according to the thermostat in Hana's room when she got up. Hana didn't think she'd felt warm since they fished her out of the ocean, and returning to Songdo with the captain - with Ana - had only solidified that.

Still, the chill of the metal through the thin fabric of her leggings, the imagined brush of the wind rippling through her hair as it drew waves across the water - she minded it less than she had even two days ago. It was fine, for all of its discomfort. Good, even, to remember that her body could still feel, still fight. It wasn't much different from the ache in her legs after a long workout, the crack of her lower back when she stood up from her chair after streaming.

Hana couldn't remember the last time she'd thought so much about her body and what it could do - at least, thought about it for a reason other than resenting being crammed into push-up bras and skintight suits whose sponsorship logos were supposed to speed her along to success in the cockpit but whose total lack of pockets only made her nervous, when they weren't actively hindering whatever repairs needed doing.

She'd never been grounded for such a long period of time, never needed the sort of whole-body recovery that kept her out of her mech, out of the sky, out of her _job_. Even five years ago when she'd sprained her wrist playing Nights of the Swallows and been in a brace for two weeks, she'd streamed other things, coached instead of played that weekend's tournament. She was stuck and bored and still had things to do - shuttling between physical therapy and the construction garage and playing thirty minutes here, an hour there of single-player games where no one would recognise Hana Song _or_ D.Va - but none of them were much good at letting her remember that she'd survived.

The scent of jasmine had crept around her before she pulled herself back to the present enough to notice Ana standing next to her, two mugs of tea in hand. "Am I interrupting?"

"You? Never," Hana said, and didn't even care that she must sound overeager. "I, um. You've been a total lifesaver this week, you know? I wouldn't know what to do with myself otherwise."

"Glad to be of help," Ana smiled. She handed off one of the mugs as she sat down, her fingers lingering where they brushed Hana's hand. "I would be lying if I said I wasn't hoping to find you, but I didn't want to presume."

"Nah. It's always nicer up her with someone else."

"Is it?" Ana grinned, and Hana's cheeks grew warm at the accidental innuendo (was it accidental?). "What is this place for, then, besides watching the sunrise?"

"Drills, mostly. Taking off when we don't have a full runway, landing if we were coming in hot and have to get through base defences without letting the Gwishin through as well."

"How did you do in those drills?"

The question was light, almost teasing, but Hana felt the bottom drop out of her stomach anyway.

_I was number one. I never clipped the top of the wall as it rose and went crashing to my knees like Casino. I never hit my boosters too late and fell off the edge at launch like D.Mon. I never forgot to correct for z-drift and flew up into the catwalks and got so tangled I couldn't show my face in the mess for three days._

It was the right answer to the question Ana asked, but not, perhaps, the question Hana thought she wanted an answer to. Ana had been judging her since minute one, not unkindly and maybe not even consciously, but Hana knew the rituals of entering a new game and greeting your teammates, _hey, who do you play, where did you peak, bro don't bring your Armoury guild shit in here, wait, I recognise you, you were that Inquisitor three games back_ -

"I hated them." The words were out of her mouth before she could think better of them, of where she was sitting, and Hana bit her lip, glancing over her shoulder reflexively, half-expecting to see Myung there.

But she was still alone with Ana, and the rising sun lighting up the captain's deep black eyes gave Hana the encouragement she needed to continue, to give Ana the answer that she deserved. "I hated them because I would never use them, no matter what command said. I always knew that if - if it came to that, if Tokki and I had to come flying in with the Gwishin behind us, I wouldn't ..."

_Sixty seconds._

_That's not fast enough!_

"You didn't want to be responsible for the omnics getting that close to the city," Ana finished the sentence for her, and Hana was unprepared for the wave of gratitude that washes over her at not having to say it.

"No," she said, and it was like something had snapped inside of her, Ana giving her a permission to speak that she hadn't known she had been lacking, even at Songdo. "We hold them over the ocean. It's our job to push them back, we don't - I wasn't alone out there - I knew it, I knew I had Dae-hyun and Tokki, but it was - it was me. I made the decision. I couldn't go running home even if I'd had the time. I would have died in the water if I'd had to. Tokki and I, or Busan - it wasn't a choice. It should never be a choice. And Command keeps pretending anyway. They're wrong, but it's the only thing they know how to do, so -"

She was gripping her mug far too tightly, the ceramic burning her hands. Hana took a sip, the only possible way to stem the tide of words, too much far too fast, and spluttered at the heat as Ana rubbed soothing circles against her back. She leaned into the touch, too exhausted by her unexpected speech to think about propriety, and smiled up at Ana, thin-lipped and half-obligatory. And Ana said nothing about how her face would stick that way and lose sponsorship money if she wasn't careful.

Ana said nothing at all, in fact, and the silence rose soft and jasmine-scented between them as Hana realised, a moment too late, that she might be verging too close to other painful memories. Ana had been fighting omnics since before Hana was born, and although she treated Hana with the respect and warmth of a fellow soldier and a friend, the severe sweep of her eyepatch and the calloused warmth of her hand on Hana's knee, Hana knew she'd been a soldier long enough that not all of her friends had been so lucky as the MEKA squad had been.

"It's not even hypothetical anymore," she said. "I came back and Tokki didn't, and he was just a mech, but..." Hana sighed. "When Dae-hyun told me how long the overload would take, I shot him. Is it stupid that I feel guilty for that?"

"No," Ana said, and the immediacy of her answer was comforting. "We trust our lives to our equipment on the field, you pilots most of all. It's not surprising you might start to think of them … affectionately."

Hana thought about the pistol that never left Ana's waist, not even on the beach, and wondered what other complicated feelings might come along with that affection.

"It's a game," she said softly, but she couldn't summon her usual lightness and, for the first time, wondered if she was lying to herself. "What we do. How we fight. It has to be, because if it's not -"

"It's not," Ana said, and she - she sounded comforting, despite it all. "Mechanically - but you of all people should know it's not just mechanics."

"No," Hana agreed, and bitterness crept into her tone. "Sometimes war's about your pretty face and how much sponsorship money you bring in. Which is still a game."

"War and life are both far more unexpected." She met Hana's eyes, and Hana thought, in that moment, that she would never remember how to breathe again.

As usual, her mouth took over instead. "Unexpected like if I asked to kiss you?"

"Just like that," Ana said with a smile. "But that is a very welcome sort of unexpected. If, of course, that is what you're asking."

Hana set her mug down with a trembling hand, eyes falling to Ana's slightly parted lips. "Yes," she said. "Please, I'm - yes, I'm asking." After everything, it was almost an easy thing to ask.

"Well then," Ana said with a smile. Her hand cupped Hana's cheek, and Hana closed her eyes and let herself be led as their lips met for the first time, the warmth of Ana's mouth chasing away the lingering memory of the sea.


End file.
